Excerpt from A Summary of the Law of Divorce After Henry VIII had broken with Rome, an Act was passed, 32 Hen. 8, c. 38, which, in effect, limited the prohibited degrees to those specified in the 18th Chapter of Leviticus. This statute, with some modifications made in 2 3 Ed. 6, c. 23, and 5 6 Wm. 4, c. 54, is still the law. If no such impediment could be discovered by the ingenuity of the canonist lawyers the Spiritual Courts had still the power to de cree a divorce a mensa et thoro on the ground of adultery by one of the married pair. Such a decree did not in terms dissolve themarriage tie because that tie could not be loosed by any human agency. All it did was to sentence the parties to a separation from bed and board. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.